A federal judge in Boston on Friday moved the case of a detained Tufts University doctoral student to Vermont, where the Turkish national was briefly held before being moved to an immigration detention facility in Louisiana.
Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, was taken by immigration officials as she walked along a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville on March 25. After being taken to New Hampshire and then Vermont, she was put on a plane the next day and moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, Louisiana.
Ozturk is among several people with ties to American universities who attended demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians during the war in Gaza and who recently had visas revoked or been stopped from entering the U.S.
Her lawyers filed a petition in Massachusetts seeking her release, but Justice Department lawyers argued that Ozturk’s petition was filed in the wrong state and should be dismissed or transferred to Louisiana.
Ozturk’s lawyers said at the time they filed the petition, they had no way of knowing where she was. They also noted that it was filed while Ozturk was in a vehicle within the control of Massachusetts-based ICE officials, making the Boston court the appropriate venue.
U.S. District Judge Denise Casper on Friday moved the case to Vermont, where Ozturk was being held at the time the petition was filed. In doing so, she cited a federal law that says if a case is filed in the wrong venue, it can be transferred to any district in which it could have been brought if such a move serves “the interest of justice.”
“Here, because Ozturk was confined overnight in Vermont when the petition was filed, the District of Vermont is the proper transferee court,” she wrote, adding that it will be up to Vermont to determine if it has jurisdiction given Ozturk's subsequent move to Louisiana.
Ozturk’s lawyers have said her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process. They had asked the judge to order that she be immediately returned to Massachusetts and released from custody.
The judge did not address the merits of the petition, saying jurisdiction must be settled first, but said Ozturk's attorneys raised “serious issues” about her arrest and detention.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said last week, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.
She was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
On Thursday, her lawyer released a statement from Ozturk in which she described her graduate-level research working with children and youth, and said she would continue to stand up against injustice.
“I believe the world is a more beautiful and peaceful place when we listen to each other and allow different perspectives to be in the room,” she wrote.
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Associated Press writer Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.
Holly Ramer, The Associated Press
